


3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate

by Pseudothyrum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Frederick Chilton has a bad day, Gen, Hallucinations, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1770088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudothyrum/pseuds/Pseudothyrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick Chilton awakens in a strange place, abducted and drugged by someone unknown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwixforBats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwixforBats/gifts).



> Written for the kinkmeme prompt "After Yakimono, I rewatched Roti and realized how much I love hurt Chilton. So basically I want a fic with Chilton going through utter hell- maybe he gets tortured or something, but it's entirely up to the author- and without any comfort to make it all okay. How far you want to take it is up to you and I'm okay with pretty much anything, just please don't kill him off. Bonus points for utterly broken crying Chilton."

Frederick woke up slowly, swimming upwards to consciousness through waves and waves of drowsiness. He tried to grasp at his memory but it slipped through his fingers like water; he had only the vaguest recollection of working in his office late at night and feeling unaccountably tired. He felt almost feverish, and when he tried to move his limbs he found he was sluggish and uncoordinated. He flailed a hand out and encountered rough cement walls. The ground was dirt, cold and damp. Was he in a cellar? He closed his eyes, and snatches of moments passed in vivid, unpleasant bursts behind his eyelids. He remembered someone coming into his office, he remembered being unable to move when the someone hoisted him out of his chair. He remembered a car driving down a long road. He remembered the cool silence of a rural area at night. He remembered nothing else. He felt his eyes drift closed. 

***

He awoke again, suddenly and screaming. The shadows had come alive and were tormenting him, jamming themselves down his throat, worming their way in under his eyelids, settling in his lungs. Ravens pecked at his flesh and clawed at his eyes, their talons picked at his scar until his body was slick with blood. He screamed himself hoarse and thrashed as much as he was able, his limbs still useless and confused. Finally, exhausted, he lay still on the cold dirt floor, spread-eagled and defeated. For a moment the haze receded and he was horribly aware, the clarity more terrifying even than the hallucinations had been. For the first time, he noticed a circle of light above him.

“Where am I?” he croaked, and then, more loudly, “I’ll pay you. Whatever you want, I’ll pay it, please just let me out,” Silence greeted him, and panic overtook him suddenly, a great tide of fear that perhaps he was to be left here to die, and he barely kept himself from screaming.

“Please, why am I here?” For a moment longer there was silence but for his laboured breathing. 

“You are being punished, Frederick,” said a voice from above him, a shape hovering in a sphere of light, “and we have only just begun.”

The light vanished, and he was alone again. 

***

The next time he awoke, Abel Gideon was there with him. He was dripping with shadow, his hands dripping with blood. Frederick scrambled backwards and away from him, breathing heavily, pressing himself against the cold stone wall, knees to his chest. Gideon’s mouth opened but no words came out, only the patient, steady beeping of hospital machinery. He could even smell it, the cold, hateful anaesthetic of a lonely hospital room, sterile and bereft of visitors. He closed his eyes and covered his ears, curled in on himself as if that offered any protection, but he knew it was pointless because Gideon had gotten under his skin. He could feel him moving in his chest, coursing through his blood. He choked on blood and bile, on memories that wouldn’t stay buried. He felt Gideon’s hands in his hair, deceptively gentle. He shuddered and tried to buck him off, uncurling his body to find that he was alone, the steady, unending beeping his only companion. He lashed out, flinging himself unsteadily at the walls of his prison, hands smacking ineffectually against the hard stone. Anything to stop the noise, to get attention, to get something. And then it was gone, or perhaps it hadn’t been there at all. He collapsed, uncertain and unsure of himself, all the aggression and anger drained suddenly away. He let his eyes close. 

***

He could hear a voice speaking the next time he was conscious, but he wasn’t sure if it was a hallucination or if it was real. Uncertain, terrified, he clawed frantically at the walls. When they did not give way to shredded fingers and broken nails he turned to his own body, tearing at his clothes and his hair, clawing desperately as though this would stop the voice that burrowed insistently in his ears.

“You are alone, Frederick,” said the voice, calm and cool, “you are alone and nobody is coming to look for you. You could be here forever and no one would know.” 

“Please,” Frederick said, or thought he said, “please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” 

“You might die here Frederick,” the voice continued, unmoved, “and do you think anyone will cry at your funeral? Do you think anyone will notice your passing?” Frederick could not stop himself from sobbing, and it was as though a dam had broken within him and he was taking great, gasping gulps of air, tears spilling over his cheeks. He felt as though he was drowning.

“I’m sorry,” his tongue felt thick, words slurred and strange in his mouth, “I’m sorry, please,” 

“Your sin is hubris, Frederick. Do you see where it has brought you? Do you see how meaningless your own life truly is? You have been here for over two full days and nobody is looking for you,” Frederick rolled onto his side and wept as the voice went on, “nobody will even know you are dead.” Frederick wept, and prayed that he would drown.

***

He twitched and moved, uncoordinated and clumsy, about his prison. He was thirsty, so thirsty, and he could feel his mouth moving but he didn’t know what he was saying. Words tumbled from his lips in a torrent of sound, got stuck on his teeth, choked him with noise and meaning and things he had to say but couldn’t. 

“What’s happened to your teeth, Frederick?” the voice whispered.

Frederick reached up cautiously to feel his mouth. At his touch the teeth began to decay and fall out. He could feel them bouncing into his lap and then onto the dirt floor. He scrambled in the dirt to pick them up and fit them back where they had gone, but the ones he picked up kept crumbling apart, and new teeth kept falling out. He panicked, fingers picking at the dirt. 

“Or is it spiders?” the voice asked, and he fell backwards in his haste to drop the squirming black creature he found clutched in his fingers. He could feel them running over his body and he flailed to dislodge him, hands clawing uselessly at his hair. He rolled about on the floor but couldn’t kill all of them, there were just too many. Above him, he could hear quiet laughter. 

***

The hallucinations slowly ebb away and he is left with a deep, aching tiredness in his bones. He wakes up and he falls asleep, and in between he feels his fingers closing around air, searching to grasp at things he isn’t sure he can even see. Teeth, or spiders, or thin air, he doesn’t know. He tries to climb out of the pit, and maybe he succeeds, because he wakes up once to find himself wrapped in a blanket, being carried into a car. He wakes up again when he is being dumped, without the blanket, on the road in front of the hospital. He tries to walk but his legs are weak and uncooperative. He crawls towards the bright lights of the emergency room, a beacon of safety. He can hear footsteps behind him and they spur him on, knees and palms shredding on rough asphalt, finally giving way in those last, precious inches.

He claws his way slowly and painfully through the doors, raw fingers scraping uselessly on the tile. He is filthy, streaked with blood and dirt and excrement. He hears one of the nurses mutter something about drug addicts, and he tries to respond but the words catch in his throat and he coughs instead. 

“Behind you,” whispers the voice, or an echo of the voice, or maybe nobody at all. He spins onto his back and claws desperately away from the encroaching darkness, the need to flee what may be lurking behind him all-consuming. He barely feels the hands of the orderlies when they attempt to restrain him, can hardly hear the words they are trying to say. He knows he is still out there in the darkness, the voice, the shape in the light. He can feel him watching. He can hear him laughing still.


End file.
